I hope you can give me some advice on BlackBerry app development.
We need a mobile application made for our online shop. We have determined that our customers will use BlackBerry phones running on BlackBerry 4.6.0 and newer.
My question is; is it possible to develop one app that will be usable for all devices since BB 4.6.0 (so someone with a Bold 9700 can use it, but so can someone with a new Torch)?

Would love to hear your opinion!

Dougsg38p

04-12-2012 10:36 PM

Re: Which platform should we develop for?

I'm not even sure that the 4.6 JDE is available any longer.

Using the java platform, your JDE must be <= the target OS level.

My experience says that virtually 100% of new shipments, and probably 70% of all BB phones, can or do run 5.0 or later.

Having said all of that, you understand that the Java platform is end-of-life, and the new QNX phones (OS10) have a completely different OS and dev environment. And just to rub salt in the wound, the new OS10 provides no backward compatibility for BB java apps (although they *do* provide such support for Android java apps).

So, there is no real good answer to your question. Maybe you should just write for Android?

belleair

04-13-2012 06:37 AM

Re: Which platform should we develop for?

Thank you for your advice! We're in an emerging country so many of our customers still have the old devices. We'll now have 2 BB apps developed; one focussed on Bold 9700 and one on Torch 9800. After that we'll have one for Android too. Would we then have all devices with 4.6 and newer covered?

Mark Rejhon

04-13-2012 03:28 PM

Re: Which platform should we develop for?

Quote:

Originally Posted by belleair
(Post 1774747)

Thank you for your advice! We're in an emerging country so many of our customers still have the old devices. We'll now have 2 BB apps developed; one focussed on Bold 9700 and one on Torch 9800. After that we'll have one for Android too. Would we then have all devices with 4.6 and newer covered?

It really is pretty hard to say; without testing in various emulators. Some 4.6 apps still work on 7.0 devices, but not always. And you've got the touchscreen Bold 9900, and different screen resolutions to worry about. Also, BB app dev can take longer than Android in my experience, so by the time you finish, the Bold 9700 might be obsolete. Make sure you are careful at spending your development dollars, if you continue to develop for BB, but I know BB is very popular in many emerging countries right now.

Make sure you test in the Simulator devices even if you don't have the hardware, test on at least 5 or 6 similar models that you don't have, to make sure you can make minor bugfixes for devices that are a little different than popular devices in your country. 9700 apps will often work on 9300 devices, and probably 9790/9900 if it knows how to scale to different screen resolutions, and make sure you can operate with both touchscreen-only (i.e. first Torch model), touchpad-only (i.e. 9700), and touchscreen/touchpad blackberries (i.e. 9790 / 9900). If the first torch model is not used by anyone in your country, skip programming for touchscreen-only models, then.

Do your damndest best to see if you can get away with programming for 5.0-and-later, since it is an expensive nightmare maintaining for 4.6-and-up devices, keeping apps working on both older AND newer blackberries.